This is a blog about my lived experience of lesbian life and love as a disabled artist, an activist, a survivor, 'mam' to many diverse daughters and as a practitioner of critical community psychology. My aim is to 'tell my story' focusing on life before and during the demise and sadly, the eventual death of my partner and more recently 'wife' (and that too is another story!) Ros Norton-Lovell (nee Norton) 1953-2018.
This is Ros on one of our many walks in the North Yorkshire Moors, pretending to play a tune on her bottle of water....Ros loved to joke and play about, she was in touch with that part of herself but don't be fooled into thinking she was a push over, far from it!
Ros was like the woman on this Tarot card, the nine of pentacles, refined and self sufficient with the keen eye of a Hawk and not always tame in her 'testament' though always on the side of people who have experienced oppression in her life and her art.
I loved this about Ros, we share(d) the capacity to talk 'our truth' to power, as individuals or as part of a collective, and the necessary courage to do so. Ros was supportive of and engaged with a lot of diverse people in the many spaces and places to whom she felt she belonged. This was in-form-ed by her ethics, her values, principles and most importantly to Ros, her politics. Ros aimed to 'walk the walk' in addition to 'talking the talk' of participatory praxis. A quality that many participatory action researchers and activists share but Ros's particular way of doing this was as unique as she was.
I loved this about Ros, we share(d) the capacity to talk 'our truth' to power, as individuals or as part of a collective, and the necessary courage to do so. Ros was supportive of and engaged with a lot of diverse people in the many spaces and places to whom she felt she belonged. This was in-form-ed by her ethics, her values, principles and most importantly to Ros, her politics. Ros aimed to 'walk the walk' in addition to 'talking the talk' of participatory praxis. A quality that many participatory action researchers and activists share but Ros's particular way of doing this was as unique as she was.
It was no accident that Ros loved terriers for more than one reason.......including their taste in Guinness! Ros was as hue-myn as the rest of us and her palette was often full to brimming with colours, tones, depths and mixes that included the unique, the unusual, the unexpected and the splodges at the edges where all the best inspiration comes from. The picture below shows one of my favourite paintings by Ros for what I think are obvious reasons.
However, all was not plain sailing during the four years Ros and I attempted to navigate a path on the 'course' of our relation-ship and so I would sometimes share poems as a way both in-two and out-of our shared experience. I've done this most of my life, since childhood, as a way to release my feelings (and then I don't need to act on them, though I reserve the right to do so when needed). I do this during the times I feel overwhelmed by what life pre-s(c)ents. You know what I mean, those smells that get stuck in the very hairs of your nose and you can't shake them off or 'blow' them away no matter how much you may want to.
And for an example of this poetry process at work, please see the poem 'Be my lover....' below. I reckon its pretty self explanatory..... cos who among us has not had to deal with issues of 'control' in relationship? I realise that in this we were no different to anyone else but the way in which we dealt with this aspect of our relationship was to me unique. To use art as a place to be open and honest together, to share, not to blame or shame but to attempt to under-stand and negotiate a path through to where we wanted to be (once we found our-selves that is).
Be my lover
I don't know how to say this,
so I thought a poem
might say it for me
I love you so much
and I know that you love me
But I struggle to be around you
when you try to control
everything I do
I know its when
your under stress
I see it in your face
Even when you don't
I feel it in your need to know
where everything is
and everything goes
But people are not things
that can be placed
And feelings no matter how little
we want to feel them
cannot be erased
they do not go away
So please don't live your life in regret
for what you did not do or say today
Please let me be myself
cos I can't (won't) live another way
You see I did not leave my mother
to end up with an-other
So be my lover, sister, 'important other'
But not my mother!
This was written on the 28th of October, 2017 more than a few years after we met and became lovers. Sometimes it helps to remind our-selves what we were originally aiming for and why. Ros was challenged by my poems, not all the time but by a fair few, as evidenced by her poem below. To my knowledge this is the only poem I've ever known Ros to write but who know's there may be more I'm unaware of, I certainly hope so!
I met this irritating woman who
bosses me about
Who is only who she is, no pretence
with fierce ideals and Politics
Challenging mine, sharing many, challenging me
So at the risk of repeating myself, this blog is about the experiences I / we shared during Ros's demise and death and our use of poetry in this pro(se)-cess.
I'll say more about my penchant for splitting words later but for now I'd like to end this 'introductory episode' with a poem written 'by my-self' (in every sense of that phrase) sitting at the side of the road, after leaving the hospital Ros was staying in, to travel the hour by car back to our home in mid-Wales. This particular journey followed on from our being given the news that Ros had breast cancer with secondaries and had 'at best weeks left to live'.
Untitled
Like a phagocytic cell
It crept in
Tendrils and entrails
Raggy
Puckering up
Her lovely breast
Orange peel
and inverted nipples
Drying up your juices
from the inside
Eating you alive
Thriving
on that which we
forgot
Forget me not
My love
Forlorn and weary
weeping tears
of sorrow
before the end
has even begun....
Jacqui Lovell-Norton, written 9th April, 2018 at 10:29 am
And lastly to share a note I found in the weeks following Ros's death that gave me hope and consolation that all was not lost, something of the essence remained to remind me of why we were, where we were, in the first place......
And for an example of this poetry process at work, please see the poem 'Be my lover....' below. I reckon its pretty self explanatory..... cos who among us has not had to deal with issues of 'control' in relationship? I realise that in this we were no different to anyone else but the way in which we dealt with this aspect of our relationship was to me unique. To use art as a place to be open and honest together, to share, not to blame or shame but to attempt to under-stand and negotiate a path through to where we wanted to be (once we found our-selves that is).
Be my lover
I don't know how to say this,
so I thought a poem
might say it for me
I love you so much
and I know that you love me
But I struggle to be around you
when you try to control
everything I do
I know its when
your under stress
I see it in your face
Even when you don't
I feel it in your need to know
where everything is
and everything goes
But people are not things
that can be placed
And feelings no matter how little
we want to feel them
cannot be erased
they do not go away
So please don't live your life in regret
for what you did not do or say today
Please let me be myself
cos I can't (won't) live another way
You see I did not leave my mother
to end up with an-other
So be my lover, sister, 'important other'
But not my mother!
This was written on the 28th of October, 2017 more than a few years after we met and became lovers. Sometimes it helps to remind our-selves what we were originally aiming for and why. Ros was challenged by my poems, not all the time but by a fair few, as evidenced by her poem below. To my knowledge this is the only poem I've ever known Ros to write but who know's there may be more I'm unaware of, I certainly hope so!
I met this irritating woman who
bosses me about
Who is only who she is, no pretence
with fierce ideals and Politics
Challenging mine, sharing many, challenging me
So at the risk of repeating myself, this blog is about the experiences I / we shared during Ros's demise and death and our use of poetry in this pro(se)-cess.
I'll say more about my penchant for splitting words later but for now I'd like to end this 'introductory episode' with a poem written 'by my-self' (in every sense of that phrase) sitting at the side of the road, after leaving the hospital Ros was staying in, to travel the hour by car back to our home in mid-Wales. This particular journey followed on from our being given the news that Ros had breast cancer with secondaries and had 'at best weeks left to live'.
Untitled
Like a phagocytic cell
It crept in
Tendrils and entrails
Raggy
Puckering up
Her lovely breast
Orange peel
and inverted nipples
Drying up your juices
from the inside
Eating you alive
Thriving
on that which we
forgot
Forget me not
My love
Forlorn and weary
weeping tears
of sorrow
before the end
has even begun....
Jacqui Lovell-Norton, written 9th April, 2018 at 10:29 am
And lastly to share a note I found in the weeks following Ros's death that gave me hope and consolation that all was not lost, something of the essence remained to remind me of why we were, where we were, in the first place......
Written more clearly below for ease of access:
"Poetry is a subjective truth which has an objective reality because someone has realised it....then we call it poetry."
Ros Norton - Lovell (2018)
